Life is short. While being productive is really important, we also have a limited amount of time on earth to live the best life we possibly could. It is also great for mental health. Shilagh Mirgain, Ph.D., a health psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health relied on her bucket list to keep track of her “inner wisdom” throughout her life. She even used her bucket list to help her summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, which had been on her list for 20 years. Here are 6 reasons why you should have a bucket list for your life.

1. It makes it more realSome ideas seem crazy until it is on a piece of paper or a list. Maybe today it seems crazy, but after 5 days of looking at the list, it won’t seem like such a crazy idea after all.

2. It gives you a sense of what is importantAs what Shilagh Mirgain, Ph.D. stated, it gives you a sense of “inner compass”. It is supposed to help you determine what is important to you in your life.

3. It adds excitement in your lifeIt is proven that it is a lot more exciting in planning something than actually doing. While you are planning something, it allows you to look forward to that particular moment in life when the event might actually happen.

4. It gets you out of your comfort zoneYour bucket list of adventure should be exciting ideas of things to do that would not only get you off the couch but also get you out of your comfort zone.

5. It gives you a sense of accomplishmentFinishing something on your to-do list will give you a sense of accomplishment. Being able to have trekked Patagonia or have scuba dived in Indonesia might give you a better sense of accomplishment and help with self-esteem.

6. A great conversation piece in a party It will help you become a cool person at a party with great stories to tell. It might really help with social networking and gaining business relationships.

Bucket list might sound like a cheesy idea, but it definitely helps with finding your inner compass and fill your life with purpose. It will help build character and solidify your sense of being.

Work has been revolutionized by technology since the industrial revolution. There are many jobs that people have never heard about due to replacement by technology and the people with these past careers moved on to a more efficient society. For example, milkman, young men who deliver fresh milk daily door to door were replaced by the invention of the refrigerator. The ice-cutters were replaced by the invention of freezers. Knocker-uppers were replaced by alarm clocks. Switchboard operators were replaced by telephones. Travel agents were replaced by the invention of the internet. Video rental employees in Blockbuster were replaced by Netflix.

With every technological advancement, there were people willing to adapt and ones who were too stubborn. Of course, those who were willing to adapt eventually win out the ones who refused to change. As an entrepreneur, one must adapt and adjust to the market and the times. Here are a few ways your business could adapt to AI.

Start small- Maybe there are daily small tasks that you don’t want to do, such as scheduling and booking. Make Alexa or Siri do that for you. There are also AI virtual assistants who do it as well. Think about how your company operates- Write an operational manual and think about the ways to replace whatever you can in your operation with AI. Have better insight- Collecting data for your company but had been too overwhelmed by other tasks to find patterns in your data? Utilize AI for that. Utilize AI at HRHR is about to be revolutionized by AI. No longer would recruiters spend most of their days scanning for candidates to interview and spending the next part of their days scheduling interviews. There are many AI tools out there from scanning candidates to scheduling interviews with them to make your hiring process easier. Use a Chatbot-No longer are chatbots only available to large corporations. You can employ chatbots in your daily life and your company to answer repetitive questions.

Adapt to make your life and business more productive. You should be spending your time to focus on things that actually matter instead of focusing on some frivolous tasks that should be replaced by a robot.

Excited to start your new business in the new year? If you are getting a slow start to 2019, maybe this is the time to start looking into starting your new consulting business! Here are 6 ways to start your consulting business and make sure you dominate 2019.

1. Target Your NicheYou need to figure out what industry you know best. Do you have a background in accounting, marketing, or engineering? Figure out if your potential customers need service in your background. Identify the potential customer’s needs and problems so you could use your skills to solve their problem.

2. Solve a Specific Problem Use your background to solve a specific problem. The more specific the better. Your potential customer probably already told you what problem they are having in their operations or life, so know specifically what needs to be solved.

3. Know Your ValueThe problem you solved could’ve saved your customer thousands of dollars, but instead of charging the % of savings for him, you are charging hourly. Charging hourly could mean that you are under charging for your service! Get out of that mindset. Who cares how long you spent on the problem? Let it be 3 hours or 5 hours, as long as the value you created for your customer is greater than the bill, there is a net gain for your customers. So, forget the hourly bill and consider your service as a package deal.

4. Network Go meet people! Check out Eventbrite and Meetup for events where your potential could be gathering. Working from home is great, but go to a coworking space to socialize. Who knows? Maybe they are working out of a coworking space to stay lean.

5. Have a Customer Conversion SystemAs a new consultant, you need a customer conversion system that would make sense. Let it be organic website traffic, ads, networking where you first establish contact with your customer, you need to keep being engaged with them. Lifecycle email marketing seems to work as a method to keep customers engaged. A cool fact, even Mailchimp tags contacts nowadays! Make sure to develop a way to keep your customers engaged.

6. Come up with an agreement that worksBenjamin Franklin, the founding father of the United States swore to never do business without a contract. Make sure to make an agreement for your clients based on the service you provide. Make sure that you receive legal advice for your consulting work. After all, your consulting gig is still a business and legal is super important for business!

Meet other like-minded individuals at Treehouse Society either coworking or at an event!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming in as a force that will change the world as we know it. No, we are not talking about Westworld revolting robots. ​

We are not here with AI yet!

AI is being adapted to the world believe it or not. In fact, according to the PwC’s Global Artificial Intelligence Study, AI will contribute $15.7trillion into the world economy by 2030. You could either fight with the force or use it to your advantage. Besides Alexa and Siri, you could take a look at the AI tools below to make your life easier.

Quriobot- You love your customers but you cannot stand handling customer service chat duties, but AI is here to help! Build a chatbot today with Quriobot with zero coding experience. You can give your customers multiple choice questions, ask about the weather, pricing, and so much more. https://quriobot.com/

Wrappup- Meeting recording so you can stop scribbling and focus on what is important during the meeting. It even highlights and tags the notes to remind you the topics of the meeting. http://www.wrappup.co/index.html

Covve- An AI powered contact list that allows you to strengthen your business relationships. It helps you get breaking news about your contacts with an AI-powered news engine, build your network by leveraging current contacts, upload contacts with a simple business card scan, categorize and tag contacts, and get automatic reminders to follow up. https://covve.com/

Clara- Spend your time better and have an AI assistant schedule interviews for you. Clara can book your interviews swiftly and follow up when you drop the ball. https://claralabs.com/

Docubot- Find our legal system tricky to get through? Instead of sitting down with a lawyer, Docubot generates documents for you and guide you through the process. https://aux.ai/

Futurenda- Time moves really fast in the modern world. Don’t waste it! Manage your time better by allowing AI assistant Futurenda to prioritize your time for you. https://www.futurenda.com/

Bookmark- Dream your dream site today with the assistant of Bookmark. All you need to do is to answer some simple questions and Bookmark will auto-generate countless versions of your website with a click of a button. https://www.bookmark.com/

Hopefully, with these tools you would be a lot more productive in 2019. Instead of having AI replace you, adapt fast and utilize AI to make your work easier!

2018 is now gone and we’ve passed almost half of the first month of 2019. But while that may be so, you aren’t way past the year to launch your business. The first couple of months of the year are still here to offer you opportunities to reflect and plan to launch your business. But if you aren’t planning to start a business, here are 5 reasons why you should consider it.1. Modern Customers Are In for More Personalized ServiceWith businesses further adapting to a modern customer, a new business that prioritizes a seamless, personalized service and fast delivery will be available. Modern customers today gravitate to online services that can provide them with better user experiences. Yet, most businesses fail to adapt to the modern times. The New Year would be an excellent opportunity to launch a business and take advantage of attracting these potential modern customers.2.Improved Technology Will Make Business Operations EasierTechnology is more advanced than ever. You could probably build whatever you could dream of. Among the technologies to be expected this year include predictive analysis and AI, which will deliver fantastic customer experience. It will be a game changer this year, particularly in giving businesses greater insight. 3.Plenty of Small Business OpportunitiesIf your goal is to become wealthy, launching a small business might not give you that chance. However, small business might be able to generate you an income to live with instead of working for the man. This year’s forecast shows a bit optimistic on global trade growth, and the economy is leaning to positive. With that, starting a business this year might finally realize your dream of becoming your boss and making all the decisions.4.Significant Changes on Banking is on the WayEven before the end of the year, there are already significant changes in banking. These changes will no doubt create a massive disruption in how you make your payment. With more radical payment methods coming along with improved technology, your mobile phone will be your wallet. With this are many opportunities to bring a potentially profitable business closer to your target audience.5.The New Year is a Time to Do Something You LoveOf course, besides the changes to come this 2019, there is no reason to launch your business that is more compelling than doing something you love. If it has always been your dream to start your own business and you think you it is time, then go for it. If you work hard running your own business and truly enjoy what you do, you have the stakes to make it a success.

If you are unsure if this year is the perfect year to launch your dream business finally, the reasons mentioned might be enough to start. But like what the last reason is all about, it matters a lot that you love what you do. It is essential to choose a field where you are passionate in so you can stay in the business to make it scale.

​Mindshare capture is the amount of space a company occupies a customer’s mind. According to Investopedia, “Mindshare is a marketing term that describes the amount consumer awareness or popularity surrounding a particular product, idea, or company. Practically, it is the consumer perception of a particular brand or product compared to their rivals as measured by the amount of talk or mentions generated by the public or the media.” The more mindshare a company has, the more market share it will convert and the brighter their future will be. It is not easy to capture the minds of people in the modern days as an average person at the computer probably has more than 5 tabs open at a time, plenty of messages coming through, and social media newsfeed being as hyped as ever.

If your company can successfully gain mindshare of your customers, it will lead to more sales. Once your company had gained the mindshare of your customers, probably 3 out of 5 tabs opened on your customers’ web browser are at your company’s web page. And as humans are social animals, your customers might chat with their friends via social media, texts, or word of mouth which will make mindshare capture even stronger.

Here are 4 ways to ensure success in gaining mindshare. 1. Have a unique and great product-If you have a great product, your customers will for sure come back for more. For example, Coca-Cola has had the same great recipe since the 1800s. Another example would be Amazon, which was a unique way to sell books on the internet. Both Amazon and Coca-Cola were great for their unique product.

2. Offer great customer service- People definitely remember if they were made to feel special and they would definitely tell their friends about it.

3. Have your product always be available-Make sure your product is always available. Not only would your customers be excited about it, but also, you could only make money when your product is available unless you are running a Kickstarter campaign. But, you are building a real company so make sure it is always available.

4. Make your customers feel something-Your customers should be excited, happy, fascinated, or whatever feeling they have while using your product. The more they feel while using your product the more your company will occupy their mind. Apple was a master of this. Their ads would make people feel something and Steve Job’s presentation would make users feel like they are different just by using Apple products.

Time is a valuable asset. As the old saying goes, “Time lost can never be regained.” One must take ownership of one’s own time to never waste it. Time management is a super important element in productivity to achieve what you want in life. We are going to explore ways to have better time management to take control over our own productivity.

1. Prioritize your dayAlways prioritize your day according to your goal in life. List the activities that will bring you closer to your goals in life. Once you align your life goals, it is a lot easier to know what your priorities are for the day, week, or even months.

2. Make a to-do listAfter you prioritize your day, make sure to list them out with a to-do list. A to-do list helps with reminding what needs to be done through the day. On top of that, crossing out items on your to-do list is very satisfying and it can boost your will to go on being more productive for the rest of the day. If you had put the same item onto different to-do lists in different days or weeks, that means that is an item that is either unnecessary for you to do, or it is a very important item for you. Make sure you determine what it means and go forth with it.

3. Stop checking your emailChecking your email is counterproductive. Make sure to set a limit for yourself so you are only checking your email once or twice a day. There is no reason to constantly check your email. People who sent you emails could wait for your response. Remember, if someone wants something from you, that is their problem, not yours.

4. Do all your work from the same deviceDoing work from the same device means no wasted time trying to find documents you are trying to find from a random device.

5. Use the time blocking methodEssentially, break down your tasks down in 25 minutes batches as that is how long a human mind could spend focused on something. This way, you could time yourself and make sure you are maximizing your blocked time.

6. Schedule social media postsEspecially if you run a business, stopping everything to post on social media could be a waste of your time. Try to find an app such as Hootsuite to schedule your posts throughout the month so you don’t have to waste time posting on social media daily.

Time management is all about cutting down time for productivity so you could enjoy your life a lot more. Sitting at the desk longer doesn’t mean you are producing more work out of it. If you are unproductive after more than the desired amount of time of sitting at a desk, consider taking a break or going out for a walk. Make sure the time you spent at your desk is actually laser focused and productive so you are not wasting time sitting in the office when you could enjoy doing other things and living life.

Black Box Cryptography: Of Zen Noble Truths and BlockchainYou are ablack box (空). More appropriately, you and I together, in this shared space, are (in) a black box right now. Big data (縁) flows through, informing our context and ourselves. In this sense(念), we form a cipher (円相) between us, a cryptographic (法) void (無) of potentiality (如来). ​Sharing Economy We can share(業) certain things, our clothes, our food, even our “time”(時). These things are possible to share because we can shed them, alienable. When we’d rather not actually bother to take off our clothes or meet to share food, we can make images of our clothes, food, and time, and share this simulacrum(空想).​You and I can decide(思) to quantify the value of this exchange, of this present. We can slap price stickers on our clothes and our time, or even more easily price our simulacre versions(行) of our “things”(事). Monetize.

Better to put a price on an image(像) of yourself than on yourself(我), right(正)? The image, the on-screen(写)personaof yourself, is not only easier to market, to become a personal brand, but it also keeps you safe. Why not toss around digital messages, images, selfies in and out, slick and protected? Pretty soon we’ve got all these mega chat rooms running around the world, multiple online businesses and characters going(行). And the digital flows into the digital.

Heck, if we add up(欲) all the dollar signs into a ledger we have a running tally of our digital community value - line graphs on a screen tracing a speculative online digital market. Now, we know Satoshi’s folks bodied(此縁性) the flow(流), by putting something more to “crypto” - the garden in the machine(露地).

Artificial intelligence to Intelligence Perhaps you’ve been preoccupied(苦) with smoothing out the anomalies(不正常), with creating seamless feedback loops(廻) where you know what goes in to create what comes out. Control(配). Make a brand(名). A reliable product. This is the old artificial intelligence approach: make a machine learning model that fixes things and maintains “good” feedback, no big waves. This is the oldclosed-system approach. Minimize the variables. Make a nice selfie. Get likes. Monetize that shit.

Now imagine a particular cluster of these intricacies, risks, anomalies. Imagine this as a literal black box. From the view outside the box, we see what’s going in and what’s coming out - We see a steady stream of data representative of what’s inside the box(空想). We can paint the box with any image, any simulation we choose to see, and this may affect the inputs and outputs of the box. We can even paint a human face on the box, perhaps even a selfie of ourselves. But, we will never know what’s inside our box(無心相續).

When we realize we are this black box (無心) - we realize that we are the machine and the machine is us, a man/mirror mix. Suddenly Moore’s Law has not slowed after all, just reached an asymptote. Computers shrank from the size of a town, to a building, to a room, to a desk top, to a pocket, and then suddenly vanished entirely. We ARE them, the other, I and thou, in ecstasy. No more man vs nature, with “resources” and “manufacturing.” Enter the anthropocene, the primordial(阿吽), the tea ceremony(茶の湯).

This leap into the unknown stands to release us from the bounded thinking of controlling variables. It stands to transform the act of “programming” into a sensitive opening of intersubjective vulnerability (慈悲). It stands to unleash us from laboring in the dry factories of closed systems to play in the wet lush fields of open system ecologies.

Alan Waxman MLA (awecosocial.com) creates ecosocial design for health equity and cultural resiliency. By operating in locations of fragility in space and time, he aims to bring people together to reopen critical narratives. His Urban Rhythms studios with Mark Morris Dance Group, the Center For Court Innovation, and other partners, have assessed urban patterns by way of participatory engagement; setting up emic spectrums of data derived from meaning for cultural insiders. Resident participants, those who have the most to gain and the most to lose, collaborate to make real time interventions through events, dance, and environmental change. As "Neighborhood Doctor," Waxman has deployed ecosocial design in Brownsville, Brooklyn NY and Kyoto, Japan, where he served as an instructor with the University of Oregon in their Myoshinji Zen temple based urban design program. He works as a landscape designer at Elizabeth Everdell in San Francisco.

End of year could be very stressful for founders, from fundraising to budgeting for the new year to holiday parties. This end of year could lead to burn outs, sick days, and unproductive months ahead. To avoid this type of situation, here are 5 tips for self-care at the end of the year crunch.

1. Create a routineHaving a schedule could reduce stress to reduce decision time on what you should be doing on certain time of the day. It allows you to predict and plan your day, which provides your startup life a lot more stability. 2. Set boundariesSay no to some things that might not be beneficial to you. You need to set healthy boundaries and expectations to not pile your plate further. Remember, if someone wants something from you, it is their problem, not yours. Commit yourself to a set amount of social events to make sure you have some “me time” to not clog up your schedule. 3. Schedule time offNot only about vacations as some of us founders do not have the luxury to abandon our startups in the middle of the end of year chaos. However, just scheduling some time off in the afternoon to walk in the nature could make a world of difference for your mental health. If you do schedule vacations, you could rush yourself through the end of the project as hard and as fast as possible so your vacation could be amazing. As the old saying goes, “Work hard, play harder.” 4. Only check your inbox at certain timeTim Ferriss, the productivity guru, recommends checking inbox only twice a day on his blog. Checking inbox frequently could lead to distractions and take time away from what actually needs to be done. Stop checking your inbox could also have the side effect of sleeping better as you are not having the habit of waking up in the middle of the night to frequently check your inbox. 5. Make sure to find some time to exerciseAs President Theodore Roosevelt’s father told Teddy, “you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.” Your mind could only go as far as your body, so make sure you schedule some time to exercise. Even a walk after your lunch could build some cardio into your day.

Wrapping up the year could be an intense experience but with the proper self-care, it could be a better experience. Make sure to spend the time you need for yourself at the end of the year.

Many startups are stealth mode nowadays due to the fear of others stealing their startup idea. If anyone at a coworking space asks them what they are working on, they normally say, “We are a stealth mode startup.” Of course, there are horror stories of others stealing startup ideas, but ideas are only ideas if there is no execution behind them to turn them into a business. Here are 5 reasons why sharing what your startup does might help you.

1.Get immediate feedback-If you have a product to showcase, let others in the coworking space to use your product and see what they think. Since there are so many people, you can immediately get some feedbacks on what potentials users might think.

2. Gain resources-Maybe other coworking members are connected to companies, individuals, or influencers you need for your startup. Members of Treehouse love sharing information and resources with each other.

3. Potential recruit-Are you looking for someone to help you out on building your product or potential salespeople? There could be drop-in daypassers at a coworking space or at a networking event who is excited about what you are building! Even if they aren’t looking for a job, someone from the coworking circle might also know someone with the talent you are looking for your startup.

4. Collaborate-Maybe there is another company in the coworking space looking to collaborate with someone in your field! You will never know unless you connect with them.

5. Share knowledge-You can learn so much from talking to others at a coworking space. People love sharing their knowledge over coffee or lunch.

If you are still not convinced to talk about what you are working on, share only a part of your business idea especially if you are on the early stage of your startup.